Breaking Free

Depressive Realism - A More Accurate Worldview But Not Necessarily a Healthy One

2010-02-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

While common supposition is that depression is a result of (or results in) people have an inaccurately negative viewpoint of themselves and/or life in general, Depressive Realism is the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias.

Studies by psychologists Alloy and Abramson (1979) suggested that depressed people appear to have a more realistic perception of their importance, reputation, locus of control, and abilities than those who are not depressed. Especially noted was their "light-bulb" experiment, a part of their studies that consisted of depressed and non-depressed people being presented with a light-bulb and a button to press. Unknown to either group, the light bulb would go on and off independently of any pushes of the button - yet the depressed group far more accurately were able to discern this while a significant proportion of the non-depressed group felt they were exerting varying levels of control of the light bulb via the button they were pressing.

Dobson and Franche (1989) and later researchers have further supported this viewpoint with studies and similar experiments.

However...

"In recent decades, psychiatry has come to see rumination as a dangerous mental habit, because it leads people to fixate on their flaws and problems, thus extending their negative moods. Consider “The Depressed Person,” a short story by David Foster Wallace, which chronicles a consciousness in the grip of the ruminative cycle. (Wallace struggled with severe depression for years before committing suicide in 2008.) The story is a long lament, a portrait of a mind hating itself, filled with sentences like this: “What terms might be used to describe such a solipsistic, self-consumed, bottomless emotional vacuum and sponge as she now appeared to herself to be?” The dark thoughts of “The Depressed Person” soon grow tedious and trying, but that’s precisely Wallace’s point. There is nothing profound about depressive rumination. There is just a recursive loop of woe
...
The bleakness of this thought process helps explain why, according to the Yale psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, people with “ruminative tendencies” are more likely to become depressed." (Quoted from Depressions Upside - New York Times)

Daniel Gilbert, the bestselling author of Stumbling On Happiness, sees things this way:

"What gets us through life, evidently, is just the right amount of delusion — enough to fool us into feeling relatively good about ourselves (...we all believe ourselves to be above average; 90 percent of drivers certainly do), but not so much as to exceed our own credulity. "If we were to experience the world exactly as it is, we'd be too depressed to get out of bed in the morning," Gilbert writes. "But if we were to experience the world exactly as we want it to be, we'd be too deluded to find our slippers."
...
Interestingly, the clinically depressed seem less susceptible to these basic cognitive errors. For instance, healthy people can be deluded into greater happiness when granted the mere illusion of control over their environment; the clinically depressed recognize the illusion for what it is. All in all, it's yet more evidence that unhappy people have the more accurate view of reality — and that learning how to kid ourselves may be a key to mental health." (Quoted from Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert - NY Times Book Review)

Bruce Weinberg's publishing on the subject:

"psychologists have found that moderate overconfidence is both pervasive and advantageous and that people maintain such beliefs by underweighting new information about their ability." (Quoted from A Model of Overconfidence by Bruce A. Weinberg - Abstract)

And a (semi-lengthy) article that sums up these concepts (although with a somewhat pessimistic slant):

"Most people think of the “mentally disordered” as a delusional lot, holding bizarre and irrational ideas about themselves and the world around them. Isn’t a mental disorder, after all, an impairment or a distortion in thought or perception? This is what we tend to think, and for most of modern psychology’s history, the experts have agreed; realistic perceptions have been considered essential to good mental health. More recently, however, research has arisen that challenges this common-sense notion.

In 1988, psychologists Shelly Taylor and Jonathon Brown published an article making the somewhat disturbing claim that positive self-deception is a normal and beneficial part of most people’s everyday outlook. They suggested that average people hold cognitive biases in three key areas: a) viewing themselves in unrealistically positive terms; b) believing they have more control over their environment than they actually do; and c) holding views about the future that are more positive than the evidence can justify. The typical person, it seems, depends on these happy delusions for the self-esteem needed to function through a normal day. It’s when the fantasies start to unravel that problems arise.

Studies into clinical depression have yielded similar findings, leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism. This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies.

Lear's Fool speaks of wisdom disguised as madness. Those with paranoid disorders can sometimes possess a certain unusual insight as well. It has often been asserted that within every delusional system, there exists a core of truth—and in their pursuit of imagined conspiracies against them, these individuals often show an exceptionally keen eye for the real thing. People who interact with them may be taken aback as they find themselves accused of harboring some negative opinion of the person which, secretly, they actually do hold. Complicating the issue, of course, is the fact that if the supposed aversion didn’t exist before, it likely does after such an unpleasant encounter.

As one might imagine, these issues present some problems when it comes to treatment. How does one convince a depressed person that “everything is all right” when her life really does suck? How does one convince an obsessive-compulsive patient to stop religiously washing his hands when the truth of what gets left behind after “normal” washing should be enough to make any sane person cringe? These problems put therapists in the curious position of teaching patients to develop irrational patterns of thinking—patterns that help them view the world as a rosier place than it really is. Counterintuitive as it sounds, it’s justified because what defines a mental disorder is not unreasonable or illogical thought, but abnormal behaviour that causes significant distress and impairs normal functioning in society. Treatment is about restoring a person to that level of normal functioning and satisfaction, even if it means building cognitions that aren’t precisely “rational” or “realistic.”

It’s a disconcerting concept. It’s certainly easier to think of the mentally disordered as lunatics running about with bizarre, inexplicable beliefs than to imagine them coping with a piece of reality that a “normal” person can’t handle. The notion that we routinely hide from the truth about ourselves and our world is not an appealing one, though it may help to explain the human tendency to ostracize the abnormal. Perhaps the reason we are so eager to reject any departure from this fiction we call “normality” is because we have grown dependent on our comfortable delusions; without them, there is nothing to insulate us from the harsh cold of reality." (Quoted from The Total Perspective Vortex)

While that last paragraph may hit a little too close towards the Albert Camus' existentialistic view of "the absurd" for my personal beliefs, I find myself thinking there may be some merit to much of the above. The irony seems to be that most modern psychologists agree that awareness of this may in fact be counterproductive in terms of treating depression.

How about dealing with depression in others? See this post for my take on that and a little more about my personal experiences in dealing with depression myself.

Going Back

2009-01-30T12:09:00.000-08:00

     "Oh that I should go back," I thought. "They will know me, and I them, and the onerous words will comfort me even as I long for release from them.
     ""But I can never go back. I'd have to reverse my soul, which I can no more do than travel back in time, which perhaps was what I wish for now and all along.
     ""Is this true?" I wondered. "Would going there bring only an empty shell of contempt and horror before me? Or would I, could it be, that I would fall back into the warm dream, or even feel the hand of God again?
     "In my formless, boyish way, would I even go, supposing I decided to? Would I make such a small sacrifice to endure such horror, or such comfort, or would I rather imagine myself doing it for a time?
"How I loathed what had been done. Foundations stripped away, left in airless wonder. Is it to seek solace in something warmer and destructive, one last great glorious kiss of life before death, and cast such thoughts into the wind until it must suddenly overcome?
     "How can anyone, anyone at all understand. We understand nothing. We have no notion of heaven or hell. We are mortals, walking through prescriptions of life, comical sense of securities intact, and wondering what other souls in time mock our insight with words and song and art. Are we all fools, or is the last redeemer the inability to be aware of foolishness, sustained and sleeping?
     "But there! I have thought more than enough. Too much perhaps. Beating stone only bruises the beater and these thoughts, like the others, pass away."

How Time Flies

2008-12-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

It seemed just a few days ago that I told myself I'd post something or other on my blog tomorrow. Now I look at the date of my last post and am astonished.

As we get older, time seems to go by faster. Maybe this is because when you are three, a year is a third of your whole life. When I was really young a year seemed like the same as forever. When you are 37, a year is just a minor blip on the timeline.

I tell myself that I better make sure I treasure and make the most of every minute of every day. This is especially true of family. My mom and dad are both still alive and I take it for granted sometimes. I need to take advantage of the time I have left with them. I have four boys, all growing fast.

Time is tricky. Don't let it sneak past you.

Drawing of Lukey and Scampy

2006-12-26T21:34:00.000-08:00

For Christmas my wife bought me a set of drawing pencils and charcoal and a sketch pad, so yesterday I did a drawing of my son Lukey holding our kitten Scampy. I'm not sure how much of the quality can be retained through scanning it into the computer as a JPEG image, but here it is:

One thing I love about drawing (or any artistic endeavor) is that you can lose yourself in a sort of zone that is apart from the areas of your mind that keep track of time and responsibilities. After drawing the above picture (it took me about an hour and a half) my mind and emotions felt rested like I'd been on a mini-vacation.

On The Inside

2006-11-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

The snow its coming, coming down
On white and weary cloud-lit town.
The cold she's blowing, blowing in,
Bringing with it vice and sin.
The sun he's hiding, hiding well;
Everyone has lights to sell.
The dwarf is selling, selling all;
Every ticket to the ball.
The winter whistles, whistles shrill,
Setting up to make the kill,
And here I'm sitting, sitting slouched;
Legs all tucked up on my couch;
My lamps they're glowing, glowing soft,
Quilts and blankets in my loft.
My story's done; it’s done and told;
I've finally come in from the cold.

A Winnie-the-Pooh Poem

2006-11-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

If anyone reading this has ever read any of the works by A. A. Milne, particulary those dealing with Edward Bear, or "Winnie-ther-Pooh" as he was sometimes called by a certain little boy, and has a shred of introspective ability, you will know of the peculiar grace and delight that these stories can bring even to us so called "grown-ups."

One of Pooh's mannerisms is that he likes to make up rhymes that he hums to himself (and sometimes to others), and they all have a certain kind of...well, a certain something, a tone, if you will...or maybe you don't. But there it is, and I've written one below in my best Pooh voice, so perhaps you'll read it, and perhaps not, but if you do, as Eeyore would say (in a rather dry voice) "Thanks for noticing."

My Pooh Hum that I wrote for Megan Because She Taught me the Word "Confuzzled"

When thinking makes me weary
And my brain is getting bleary
And I don't know if I'm rhyming
With words like poodle, or my timing
Is just off because I'm puzzled
(Or is the word befuddled),
Unless it rhymes with poodle
Then I'd say that I'm confoodle
(only I'd say it like 'konfoozel')
Or maybe its confuzzle
(you pronounce it like 'kunfuzzel')
Like the honey on my muzzle
Which reminds me of a little something
That I must go and attend...

When You Are Feeling Down - a Discussion

2006-10-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a discussion / explanation about a poem I wrote called "When You Are Feeling Down."

What Is the poem about?
I was attempting to address what I felt my response should be when encountering sadness, discouragement, defeat, or emotional pain in others. You can read it here.

Wouldn't advice on how to correct the problem be better?
I think our natural human tendencies when we see someone feeling down is to analyze their life and tell them what we think they should stop doing, and what we think they should start doing - i.e. we try to be 'fixers' of the problem by attacking directly at what we perceive are the sources of the problem.

This certainly seems to make sense from a logical perspective. Suppose a person is depressed as a result of receiving three speeding tickets in the past week. My automatic response is probably to advise the person to stop driving faster than the posted speed limit. This advice, if followed, would almost certainly fix the problem. Wouldn't any other approach to helping this person with their problem be at best ineffectual, and possibly irresponsible on my part?

While it is true that many, though not all, emotional problems are a result of consequences to specific actions we take, and often correcting these actions would probably improve a person’s state of mind, this is not the aspect that I was thinking of when writing the poem. My primary thoughts at the time were more about how to respond compassionately to someone who is feeling down, and why I should respond this way. While it is true that my interactions with others in such situations may help or hinder them overcoming problems they may have, the intent was to explore other possibilities than being a 'fixer'. It was more of an exploration of the question “how should I treat a person who is feeling down?” Aside from the issue of showing love being important, sometimes a compassionate approach can be more effective in terms of practicality as well.

The Problem With the "Fix-it" Response
I think a typical response to a person who seems to be seeking support is some variation of "do what I tell you and it will solve your problems, and then you will feel better." This seems good on the surface, but I question the wisdom in my responding this way. I may think I understand the problem when I do not. In attempting to be solve the problem, I may be making judgments, even if unintentionally, rather than having a primary response of compassion. This could be unwise, and may not be a humble and sincere attitude of treating others in the way that I would like to be treated. I may feel that I am a good amateur counselor in a situation where I am really not. I hope I can do better than that. This was my mindset at the time I wrote the poem.

I was also thinking about the fact that there is a reasonable possibility that the individual already knows what "fixes" would help their problem(s) to go away so that they could feel better. Most people are reasonably intelligent and capable of some insight. Particularly in situations they experience repeatedly or for long periods, there is a very good chance they know what types of actions could help alleviate their problems and thus the emotional pain associated with it. Sometimes, however, people are not capable of correcting specific issues in their life when their state of mind is in the "down" mode. Sometimes the emotional state itself needs to be addressed first.

If this is the case, then the person probably needs comfort and reassurance to help give them strength to deal with their problems and/or state of mind. If I can send the message that I am trying to understand and that I care how the person feels, then I may help alleviate some pain, which may help the person achieve a more positive state of mind and be thereby better equipped to tackle the problem itself.

The practical approach may emphasize faults, even if unintentionally, and responding to a person who is feeling down with a list of actions to take make someone in a fragile mental state feel overwhelmed and hopeless. Immediately enlightening an individual about their faults and mistakes may make me feel better but may not actually help solve the problem. Life is complicated. I may not be in possession of all the facts. In my blundering attempts to be a fixer, I may simply do more damage. There may be a better way than the brute force technique of throwing on my "Mr. Fixit" cap and diving in... but it may require love and patience.

What About When I am Feeling Down?
Another thing I thought of when I wrote this was how I should deal with those times when I myself may be feeling down. In my observation, difficult experiences in a person's life usually seem to lead to one of two opposing outlooks - more compassion and understanding, or increased bitterness and cynicism. I believe that a lot of the trials we experience in life are meant to help build more of the former. I hope that I can make use of the difficult times in life in this way, to grow. It sometimes feels like a hard choice to make, but it can be made.

What About When I Can't Relate?
Through seeming chance, skill, inherited traits, environment, or any combination thereof, I may have not struggled at all in some area that another person is struggling in. I believe this is when I should be most careful not to let pride cause me to err. If I do not respond with love and humility, I may well discover, painfully, what it is really like! I think a good approach is to try to think of some analogy that I can relate to, but even if this escapes me, knowing that I am human, with faults of my own, and that I want to be loved, should be sufficient to temper my judgement. I may also want to be thankful if I discover that I don't personally suffer from every problem known to man!

Emotions Don’t Do Logic
Depression is an emotional state, and emotions affect our behavior. Sometimes, until we get past the negative, repeated attempts at solving the underlying issues may fail. Sometimes, something else is needed. We may feel defeated, discouraged, and depressed. Just like some house-cleaners "don’t do windows", emotions don’t “do logic” - that is to say, emotion is an irrational condition and it doesn’t operate by rules of logic in human beings. The preceding statement is worthy of an extended discussion of its own, but I think at some level most of us recognize this as being true. This is part of the reason why the fix-it approach often fails – it is based on logic. When you throw logic at an emotion, there is little or no interaction that occurs. For example, when you tell a depressed person to do X, Y, and Z, they may logically agree with you that they need to do those things. However, their emotional state of mind may be so strong that they fail. They simply cannot motivate themselves to implement the "logical solution", and they find themselves being defeated while trying to do whatever it is that will help them feel better. This generally leads to a response to the “fix-it” approach of feeling even more negative and discouraged, even (or especially) if the person agrees with you from a logical standpoint, but just can't seem to follow through with the "fix". It can create a vicious spiral leading ever-downwards.

If I Shouldn't Try to "Fix" the Person, How Should I Respond and Why?

The idea in writing the poem was to consider what a person really needs when they come to me for support, and in a lot of cases, a person feeling down may simply be hoping that I will help them feel better. Is this such a terrible motive, I wonder? My hope is that I can respond in such situations by putting some joy and positive energy into their life, not in hopes that I can give them some sort of strategic plan, unless they specifically indicate otherwise, and sometimes not even then, remembering that emotion is not logical, but in hopes that I can empower them. They may well know what they need to do specifically, but something intuitive inside is crying out and saying “I feel wretched and alone and defeated. I want and need to feel better. I need help in getting into a positive frame of mind so I can better deal with my problems. I need someone to believe in me, because even I don't believe in myself right now.”

How To Really Help
I believe that most of the time when someone comes to us and expresses that they are feeling down in one manner or another, the first and best response is to empathize. Try to put yourself in this persons shoes mentally for a moment. Try to genuinely understand what they are going through, and communicate this understanding to them. This alone can work wonders with a person; if they feel like you really understand and care about how they feel, then will help them feel better, and they are likely to be much more willing to let you into their life to help them.

A second but equally important response is to focus on the positive traits of the person rather than the negative ones. This often grates against our sense of logic and sometimes such a suggestion even engenders moral outrage, but generally speaking your viewpoint on this will depend at least in part on where you are coming from. Grace centered individuals will probably have an easy time accepting this premise, while a person with strict disciplinarian sensibilities and strong personal willpower may not. In either case, if a person truly wants to help another who is feeling down, focusing on the positive and not the negative simply works better in terms of helping them, regardless of how counterintuitive this may seem.

There are exceptions. Sometimes a person really doesn’t know what they need to do to feel better or correct their life. This can be true in some cases when raising children, or dealing with specific situations where someone is experiencing a trial unlike any they have experienced before. In such cases, giving good advice in the humble manner of someone genuinely trying to help and sensitive the other’s emotional condition can be of great value if I have experienced something similar and truly know the solution. For complex situations, the best thing to do may be to encourage the individual to seek professional counseling. However, in all cases, the primary response of being supportive and positive is crucial if I really want to help.

So What Do I Know?
I know this from personal experience, because I have been down to the very bottom in terms of depression. At that time, in going to others for comfort, when I encountered a primary response of being given strategic planning in terms of overcoming my faults, I almost always felt defeated and less able to overcome than before. In the cases where I was met with empathy, concern, and love, I found myself stronger and better able to overcome issues that affected my emotional state. I encountered very little of the latter, and for a long time I was caught in a downward spiral. I very nearly lost my life. I finally met an experienced, professional counselor (and a very kind and caring individual) who approached counseling from the viewpoint I have been trying to express. By that time, I didn't feel a counselor could help me - but he did, and his way worked. For the first time in my life, I began to make progress. He didn't want to talk about my problems. He wanted to make me laugh. He wanted to help me focus on the positive, and he did so by focusing on the positive himself. He loved life and he loved God, and he was infectious. Just being around him changed me. I began looking upward, rather than downward. I had a radical, life changing experience encountering this person, so I can say that this is not just something that sounds nice in a poem. I hope that I can do this with others.

Getting to the Point
I want to respond to others when they are feeling down in a positive way with genuine compassion, in a way that can empower rather than defeat a person, a way that works. Love works. Compassion works. Empathy works. Support works. Being positive with someone works. All these things not only help the person to feel better, but by making them feel better can help empower them to overcome those issues that may have been causing them to feel down to start with. That was what the poem was about.

Post originally published on 10/2/2006. Updated/edited on 9/3/2012.

When You Are Feeling Down

2006-09-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

When you are feeling down,
Let my words be wise,
The best I can devise.
Is the way I'm talking kind,
Or like an ax a'grind?

When you are feeling down,
Let me not lay blame.
Fault and sorrow are not the same.
Are my words good, positive and true,
Or would they make a happy person blue?

When you are feeling down,
Let me not tell you
What you already knew.
Sometimes good advice is wrong;
Adding to burdens will not make you strong.

When you are feeling down,
Let me bear your burdens as my own
Giving all my strength, a loan.
Let me focus on the light within,
To fan those sparks to flames again

When you are feeling down,
Let me have the insight to see
The next one who's down might be me.
Let my love rise beneath you, with no strings.
Let me be the wind beneath your wings.

Tomorrow Never Dies

2006-09-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid,
The homework I did
Was always tomorrow,
Always tomorrow;
My plans were all laid
For tomorrow.

Thought that I would be great,
At the things that I did,
Thought I'd travel the world,
(when I was a kid)
Thought I'd be who I want
Get all those things done
Be having some fun,
Be soaking up sun,
By Tomorrow.

Yet now I'm a grown man,
And I don't understand,
How did the time fly?
How'd life pass me by?
How'd wonder just die?
But I don't think I'll cry,
'Till tomorrow.

But I know there's still time,
To go where I want to go,
To be who I want to be;
I guess that I'll do it,
I Think I will do it,
Yes I'm sure that I'll do it,
Tomorrow.

Song of the Night

2006-09-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

Here I am, only thirty-five,
Already I’ve lost all my drive,
Singing The Good Life with Weezer,
While doing my best to appease Her,

And with all my thoughts, with all introspection,
A relentlessly intricate self-brain dissection,
I have found that when my understanding gets deep,
Then I get confused, or just go to sleep.

When I think I’m original, insightful, and wise,
Then it all comes to me, and I realize
How strange, how alien, everyone is;
I don’t understand them, I don’t understand you,
I don’t understand you at all.

This predictable world is so crazy
One minute I think its dreadful dull
And the next, I’m looking out
From my mind’s prison-cell
Wondering whose shadows
Are on my cave wall,
And why I don’t know them,
Understand them at all.

When I think I’m original, insightful, and wise,
Then it all comes to me, and I realize
How strange, how alien, everything is;
I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it,
I don’t understand it at all.

Reflections on a Friday Afternoon

2006-07-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

It is Friday and I am working today. (Well I am physically at my location of work anyway.) My boss, however, is out fishing in his boat, this being the first sunny day we have had here in the last year or so. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny too. While he had me in his office yesterday explaining what I needed to work on for him he got a call from his friend and I heard them discussing where they would fish and camp. It took them quite awhile. He then apologized for that phone call and outlined further what I needed to work on. Then he fired off a few more emails and exited stage right very quietly and quickly.

As I sit at my computer looking longingly out at the nice sunny day and imagining my boss on his boat and me sitting here working it occurs to me that this is the kind of situation which sums up why he is called boss and I am called, well, not-boss. It’s the sort of situation that gives rise to Communism.

The theory there is that no one is boss and they all share the boat. The reality, however, tends to be that the boat is too small and there is no bait and only the most-honorable chair-people ever get time enough away from the factory to use it anyway, so the rest of the common folk get depressed and drink too much Vodka.

So then they get disillusioned with the Great Revolution and begin imagining what it would be like to come to America and be a boss and have a boat all to yourself and tell someone else to do your work while you are on it. Then if they actually come to America they wind up becoming an overweight plumber in Milwaukee with degenerative back-disease and a corny accent. "Lonk lif zee Amereecan dreem!" they say sarcastically with a cigarette hanging on their lower lip while stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, I am still sitting here and my boss is out having the time of his life like in those ridiculous commercials for beer or amphibious trucks. You know the ones I'm talking about. Everyone is happy and beautiful and waterskiing and catching fish and throwing them to friendly bears while women in bikinis dance around the periphery. Those are the kind of commercials that tend to result in a Jihad somewhere. I can kind of understand this, because I tend to get a bitter feeling when I watch those commercials myself. Imagine what an overweight al-Qaeda member with a growing bald-spot thinks when he sees something like that. He looks at the commercial, looks down at himself, and the next thing you know he is fantasizing about blowing up buildings.

I read in the news today that a Muslim group had declared a Jihad on Israel. This struck me as strange. Not the Jihad, but the reporting of it as if it was news. Isn't there always a Jihad going on against Israel? And how does that work anyway? Do they have a certain length, and then have to be renewed in some way, possibly by filling out a form of some sort? What if someone forgot? Now that would be newsworthy - headlines like "Bin Laden lieutenant forgets to fill out Jihad renewal form, record numbers fill Israeli buses and restaurants while appearing relaxed."

I think we've all gotten a little calloused about the whole Jihad thing. So some Muslim's want to spread their religion by force and violence, what do we care? Meanwhile if someone puts up a Christmas tree on city property he makes national head-lines and gets sued for trying to use the property of the state to offend people, which promptly stirs some Southern governor to raise a confederate flag over a court-house and briefly makes allies of Zionists and those who feel that al-Qaeda terrorists are just misunderstood, child-like people that just need to be extended the hand of friendship rather than criticized for blowing things up.

The whole thing starts to get confusing at this point, which is why I don't like politics or non-sport-related internet forums. Well, my bell has rung (figuratively) and I am free to go home and watch The Simpson’s, so I will leave the field of satirical philosophy to others for now while I steep my mind in something more worthwhile.

Artfall

2006-07-10T23:23:00.000-07:00

To crucify
A melancholy softness
Pervades a sunset soul
That temperament
Unwishing
Ungrasping
No still pictures
Just fading sand
Concrete Songs
Incomplete

Uphill Corner

2006-07-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Been sleepin’ Been eatin’ Been stumbling
Around
A gloomy Icharus
Haunting the worlds of men

Now aiming for a deeper sun
Now trying to get in on the run
No more desire to have some fun
Time to start dressing in style
Hoping for that old laid-back smile
Been waiting for it for quite awhile

Thinking maybe around the corner
Is where I’ve been waiting to go
Is the explanation for this tragic TV show
The next episode, and they all laugh
Even the mental staff

Every day
And in every way
Getting better
And better

Preparing for the Spring

2006-05-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

Are you trying
To gather your strength?
When they said you're down,
Where you only crouching
For the Spring;
Were you resting
Before the big sprint;
Did the voice say
'Just a little longer,
And Then…';
Did you listen to those wind songs
One last time,
Prepared to burst into the fierce joy
One last time,
One more time,
Then to exhale it all away,
And arise to go forth to deeds great and strong,
Gathering your strength
To blast the past,
To lock down your mind upon your will,
To become at last
The end you knew you'd fulfill?
Did you lie
Preparing to gather all your strength
Reaching that still, quiet point inside
Before the storm,
Only to find, somehow
The sun had gone down
Excusing with determined frown
Cobwebs on body and face
meat ground lost
All hope and will, still,
In that quiet moment
Before the Spring.

You could summon your will
Rise and give strength
Anytime you chose,
You were just reaching that quiet, still point,
That little rest before the spring,
And now somehow
Rest has stolen your bones.
Waiting has stolen your will.
You waited for the time to come,
But no signal came
And when you tried
A ghost escaped,
A breath, your will.
You thought you sprang forth, but
You're still lying there, still crouching there,
You're still waiting in that quite, still moment,
Still gathering your strength,
Still,
Still.

Do you cry out into the emptiness
For help?
Do you cry out
Fighting off despair?
Do you beat upon the air?
Are your words upon the night
God help me,
Become a warrior,
Rise and fight,
And shine like the sun?'
Do you wonder
How now will it be done?

The Saddest Thing

2006-05-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

He says
The saddest thing
When he flies upon
The upper reaches
Of distant galaxy
Is being all alone
Some would call that free

Modesty

2006-05-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

He's got a million of 'em
And not just one
And the quality
If you put his name in lights
Will put the entire race
Within his sights

But just an empty voice
On empty wind
Rocks naught
But the supernova
Far beyond his thought

Come, Let Us Reason Together

2006-05-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

Relativity, don't waste my time
Dogma, don't make me sick
Thinking, its just your way
Your object for the day
Wisdom, this thing,
All things desire
And all they claim
Falling into everlasting fire

There is no Try

2006-05-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

Blind Mans
Decrees
so good so cruel so cold so kind
So utterly divine
Motley though they be
Children pipe
Wretches dance on midnight porches
Pigs dream of romance
With cotton candy clouds.

The wise strain gnats
Through camels hair

While nothing whispers in the air

Caught up in emanations
Source less soulless
Empty eyes in ivory sockets

The Book of Lights

2006-03-19T10:12:00.000-08:00

(Spoiler Alert: If you have not read 'The Book of Lights' by Chaim Potok, and think you might at some future date, you may not want to continue reading this post as it does give some plot information that is towards the end of the book.)

Recently I finished reading a book by Chaim Potok, 'The Book of Lights', for the second time. For what reason I do not know, but this second reading invoked in me a strong subconscious emotion akin to empathy that I did not experience the first time I read it.

As to the book itself, like many of Potok's books it deals in part with the struggle between intellectualism and the sacred, a struggle that I have personally experienced, a struggle that is at the heart of many of the political divisions in the West. It is the story of a young Jewish man named Gershon who is searching for something, perhaps akin to 'truth', which is difficult to find. He is a student of Kabbalah - writings of Jewish mystics. In regards to this, at the beginning of the book is a quote from the Zohar:

"See how many hidden causes there are...hidden from the comprehension of human beings. ...There are lights upon lights, one more clear than another, each one dark by comparison with the one above it from which it receives its light. As for the Supreme Cause, all lights are dark in its presence."

Gershon has a friend Arthur Leiden, whose father was a physicist in large part responsible for the development of the atomic bomb, christened the 'death light' by some (a blind girl saw the flash of the first test in New Mexico from over 120 miles away) that destroyed two cities and hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant and ultimately gave into the hands of man the capability of bringing about extinction of life on the planet. Arthur is also searching for something, a redemption of sorts for what his father has brought into the world, which he bears heavily. The two friends both spend time serving as Jewish Chaplains in Korea shortly after the Korean war, although their reasons for going are vastly different. Arthur winds up dying in a plane crash, and near the end of the book Gershon returns to the rooftop of the slum apartment building where he grew up. This sets the stage for the following passage:

     He waited. There was someone on the roof with him, in a corner, near a jumble of pipes. He did not turn; instead he sat down slowly on the tar paper and placed his head between his knees. He felt the boniness of his legs against the sides of his face. There he sat a long time, waiting. Yes, there was someone on the roof with him. He sat very still, waiting.
     Then he began a slow and determined descent into himself. This he did with the fiercest of concentration, moving with great care past fears and angers, past faces and shadows, deep and deeper still toward the silent, central, secret point of himself. And he sensed as he moved that someone had brushed by him on the roof and had entered him, and now they were together, and it was the whisper of the messenger from the other side, and it said, Good morning, Gershon. Yes, this darkness is morning. You take a strange journey. Have you no concern for me at all? And Gershon moved on toward the center, and the messenger said, Ah, Gershon. What can you find in here that you did not find out there? And Gershon moved on and still on and deeper and deeper still, and at the very deepest within himself he heard a voice, and the voice had a face, and it was the face of Arthur Leiden, and the voice was saying very softly, There must be something we can say or do, dear Gershon. There can't be nothing. And Gershon trembled and heard the silken voice of the messenger say, Ah, there was something. Yes, and what did it get you, dear Arthur? What? And Arthur said again, There must be something we can say or do. Something. And Gershon listened to them, to both of them within the center of himself, and then he heard distant words echoing from somewhere far beyond where he was now, words in Aramaic, and the words made the journey, and he listened, and the words were the words of the Kaddish, the sacred public affirmation of God, and he heard, "Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the world which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of Israel, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen."
     How you play with words and people's feelings! came the faintly annoyed response. How you dangle your illusions before the eyes of the weak! How -
     From somewhere came the voice of Arthur Leiden. "Amen," the voice said.
     No, Gershon said. This is for you, Arthur, and others must answer. This is for you, for us, for all the broken ones of our generation and the ones to come, for all who live and will live in the shadows of the giants. To the in-between ones who cling with their fingernails to the shards left by the giants - so we can somehow mend the world or hold it together and then have it broken again in new acts of creation. You must not answer, Arthur. Others must answer.
     And Gershon went on. "Exalted and honored be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that man can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen."
     He stopped and waited.
     You are playing with me, came the sibilant voice. I am not a simpleton. I am from the other side.
     "Amen," said Arthur Leiden quietly, faintly.
     And Gershon said, Please, please, another must answer. And he continued, "May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life for us and for all Israel; and say ye, Amen."
     He waited. There was no response. He waited. All his years and dreams he now brought to this waiting, and then he himself answered, "Amen."
     And concluded, "May He who establisheth peace in the heavens, grant peace unto us and unto all Israel; and say ye, Amen."
     And waited. And from the darkness came the halting and agitated response of the silken voice. "Amen."
     There was a long, steep, dizzying ascent - and a silence. Somewhere in the neighborhood a dog barked. The air was stifling.
     He got to his feet.
     Ah, Gershon, how many more times will you need to be broken?
     I don't know.

Although at the end of the book, this struck me as the climax of the story, and something which I cannot identify within myself responded very strongly to it. I tried to put it into words when talking with Kim about it and could not do it.

Eighteen

2006-03-18T21:41:00.000-08:00

Beat pounding in his ears, a surge of adrenalin courses through him, the arms go up, the bar rises, almost stops, an explosive roar, rises again, stops.

"Six."

Two hundred and twenty-five pounds, six repetitions. Swollen, standing veins, body flushed. Hard rock, hormones, and The Pump. He sits up from the bench, eyes glinting, his own third person. Alone in the garage.

His mind rolls out, slowly, upwards and outwards, now the outside the tiny building, a light among the many lights of the city, the world a dot, the universe expanding all around, and then suddenly back again into himself.

He puts more iron on the bar, scenes flash through his mind: running up a mountain, red and blue lights, sitting alone in the high school lunch room, an outsider looking in, a paper in the mail, mom and dad in the kitchen, discussing in low tones the score, 1420, wondering what university he would choose.

A sudden mounting frustration bursts through him, from where he does not know, does not stop to consider. He turns up the music louder, slams another plate on the bar. He lays back down, his hands grip the bar, release, grip again, tighter, he inhales, lifts the weight off the rack, down to his chest, explodes upwards, once, twice, racks the bar. Excited, he sits upright again, stands. Two hundred seventy-five pounds, two repetitions, complete concentration for a moment blocking out all pain, all doubt, everything but the moment, the glorious golden moment – past behind, future irrelevant.

A sudden flash from early childhood, pain, more weight slammed on the bar, music louder, sweat running down his chest, roaring rage, seeking to become... something. His chest heaves, breath ragged, unable to lift his arms, unable to clench a fist. He feels lost, the only feeling he has ever known.

Dreaming

2006-03-05T12:13:00.000-08:00

Dreams come swift and silent
Across the page of night
Rending heart and stone alike,
Whispering in the russet tops
Of yesterday's forests.
The nomad thoughts of time
Slip silently through shadows below
Till nothing remains but a solitary leaf
Swirling gently downward in the fetid stillness
To land, at last, upon the morning sun.

Midnight Purgatory

2006-03-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

A silent buzzing sound,
Life Slipping by with its mystery.
Ebb, flow, come, go:
The freedom of illusion
Drains through the midnight thoughts -
A vast city of darkness
And pale light
Absorbs the muffled, pillowed sobs,
Draws them into its bosom,
And cast them out
Across the dark waves
To wash upon some distant shore.

Galactic Minds

2006-03-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

Galactic Minds – there are two kinds:
One leaves the world in awe,
The other wanders, wonders,
Passes away;
Leaves no trace
Of what the world has missed.

The strike of flint on steel
Makes many sparks to fly.
But that which lights the flame –
That spark –
Sets the world afire.

The other sparks all die,
Lacking in desire.

Inspiration is a Mule

2006-03-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

Where’s the inspiration now?
Holy Cow!
Is that the best that I can do?
Rhyming words like ‘do’ with ‘shoe’?

I sure hope that muse is somewhere about,
And hasn’t gone out;
Snuffed like a small flame in the storm.
Why can’t my buried thoughts take form?

I sure hope I think of something soon
Instead of sounding like a loon.
Because this is embarrassing me.
Poems like this just shouldn’t be.

Trouble Comes in Threes, and Other Outdoor Superstitions

2006-03-01T20:14:00.000-08:00

(Note: The following is based on a true story of a disastrous fishing trip I had with my Dad.)

I have often laughed off the superstitions of the gullible, such as avoiding crossing the paths of black cats and taking special care not to break a mirror for fear of seven years of bad luck, but after thinking about it a bit, I suppose at least some of these so-called superstitions may be grounded in common sense. I used to scorn that it was bad luck to walk under ladders, and even decided to test the theory one day while helping my brother, Bubba, who was adding a room onto his house. Unfortunately, Bubba chose that particular moment to strike his thumb with the hammer he was holding. To this day I am amazed that, totally by coincidence, at the exact moment I stepped under the ladder he happened to smash his thumbnail into a blue pulp. Talk about blind chance. He even had the nerve to later suggest that I actually bumped the ladder while passing under it, just as he was putting the finishing strike on an obstinate nail. I have long suspected that the hammer was traveling just a bit faster than the normal laws of gravity would explain when it struck me on the head, but Bubba claims he just dropped it. However, as you can clearly see from this incident, it is absolutely ridiculous to let silly superstitions control the actions of your life, and I am proud to say that, especially after incidents like this, I avoid superstitions when at all possible.

Most sociologists will tell you that superstitions are grounded in our ancient, primitive fears and instincts for survival. For example, a primitive hunter-gatherer, Throg (the ancient meaning of this name is thought to mean ‘he-who-doesn’t-wait-long-enough’), may have once crossed the path of a large, black panther, only to have it turn around and spot him. The subsequent experience and physical condition of Throg as he pantomimed the story to his tribe would then have instilled a fear of crossing black cat’s paths into modern man to this very day. It is an interesting theory, but I’m not sure I buy it. After all, in this day and age we all ought to be rational human beings. I have to laugh when I hear about people who let these fears rule their lives. If they would just avoid black cats and ladders altogether like I do, there wouldn’t be a problem.

There is a whole host of superstitions out there, but the one that used to get me the most was that ‘trouble comes in threes’. I thought that had to be one of the silliest ones of all, mainly coming from paranoid statisticians who had too much time on their hands. Surprisingly, this particular theory seems grounded to an amazingly strong degree into many people’s psyche. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that if they think back long enough after something bad happens to them, there will always be two other bad things that happened to them sometime in the past. My friend Bob and I were discussing this one day at the local sandwich shop, and he claimed that the point is that the trouble usually comes in groups of three, spaced relatively close together. I started to laugh at his naïve ponderings, but then my thought turned to the last fishing experience I had gone on with my dad. We had gone on a fishing trip into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas, a real, old-fashioned, father-son get-together. My brain reluctantly began to open doors onto memories that it had kept closed, locked, and barred up until my discussion with Bob.

The trip started out rather well. My dad had just gotten a new boat and was dying to try it out. According to him, his other two boats just weren’t cut out for a gulf-coastal trip so he had found a great deal on a used boat just perfect for this trip, with a decently powered engine but a nice, shallow draft for the little bay canals we would be traveling through. He already had it hooked up to his truck when I got to his house and seemed eager to get on the road. For some reason he didn’t even think I should take the time to go in and say hi to mom, something about a nervous condition she was having lately. (I later discovered that this condition started just shortly after she discovered my dad had bought his third boat. Just the silly sort of coincidence that can start up these crazy superstitions.)

The trip itself down to the coast was pretty uneventful, but once we got the boat in the water, things started to get interesting. It seemed that the draft of the boat was not that shallow after all. To be more precise, the prop extended into the water about a foot below the actual bottom of the boat, and seemed to be fond of sandbars. Following several hours of my leaping about in waist deep bay-water pushing on the boat while my dad alternately shouted directions and gunned the engine at random intervals, we worked up quite an appetite and decided to give the fishing a break and eat lunch. We had noticed a boat-dock on a deserted shoreline about a quarter-mile away and thought it would be a good place to tie up while we ate, and managed to reach it in less than two hours and four sandbars later.

Dad was starting to get irritated with all the shouting he was having to do to get us unstuck and so was understandably a bit gruff when he ordered me to jump onto the dock to secure the rope tied to the front of the boat. Spurred on by his irritated demeanor, I leapt with alacrity onto the dock, only to discover with alarm that the dock’s designer had either run out of nails at this section or they had rusted away. The end of the two-by-eight plank on which I landed pivoted on the front of the dock’s crossbeam with a perfect see-saw effect, causing me to fall forward and experience first hand Lew’s first law of angling catastrophes. (For the uneducated, Lew was a scientific fisherman and philosopher of the late twentieth-century. He discovered several interesting things in his quest for knowledge, including the law that states that if you jump onto one end of a boat-dock plank that is not nailed down, that the other end will rise up at five-times the speed of light and smash your nose into a collection of subatomic particles resembling a squashed sausage.)

When I awoke and was done bleeding, my dad solicitously helped me back into the boat, having decided it would perhaps be best if we ate our lunch in the boat itself rather than on the dock, as originally planned. My mother had prepared a nice lunch of thick roast-beef sandwiches, but unfortunately I could not enjoy them as much as anticipated due to the fact I could not breath through my nose anymore. Not only did this remove my sense of smell, but required me to periodically stop chewing and suck in great lungfulls of air in order to breath. It was on one such attempt to eat and breath at the same time that the eating and breathing got a bit confused and a rather large chunk of roast-beef got sucked into my trachea, thus ending the whole breathing issue all-together.

I faintly remember something I had read in the past regarding how important it was to remain calm while choking, and immediately began to suspect that the fellow who wrote that had never actually been choked, something I hoped to remedy should I ever meet him. I proceeded from these brief but pleasant thoughts into a regimen of jumping into the air repeatedly with the happy result that the chunk of roast beef dislodged, and accompanied by some of his fellows, took residence partly on my father, and partly on his boat. It was at this point that my dad began to put forth the idea that he had been having a rather bad day and that perhaps it was time to go home, but I remained adamant in my hope of actually getting a baited hook into the water before giving up on the expedition. We traveled a good twenty yards before hitting a sandbar, at which point I expressed the opinion that perhaps this would be a good place to fish.
It was good to finally get my line in the water, but after the fifth time of seeing my cork go under only to have my shrimp stolen from the hook, I began to get a little frustrated. I decided the next one would not get away, no matter how small, and the moment my cork bobbed under I yanked with all my strength, hoping to at least hook the little fish that was stealing my bait.

My pole bent double under the sudden strain of my powerful surge of strength, and at the last second, the sea released my cork and tackle from its suction-like grip. Then the rod straightened. It was at this point that I experienced Lew’s second law, which states that if you yank hard enough on a fishing pole with a four-ounce lead weight, the weight will spring from the water at five times light speed and hit you in the left eye, thus inducing blinding pain and making one pupil permanently larger than the other.

The rest of the trip, including over-water travel in the utter darkness of a cloudy night searching for a lost boat-ramp while setting a world record for hitting the most sandbars in the least amount of time by one boat, ever, in the history of man, does not really bear repeating. At least not in polite company.

Coming back out of these recollections, I turned to Bob to say that I still thought the ‘trouble comes in threes’ superstition was silly, but when he asked me why my nose was crooked and one pupil was bigger than the other, I put my roast-beef sandwich down and decided to head home. There is just no reasoning with some people.

(Note: Some names were changed in this story to protect the innocent)